The poet represented the unhappy Queen of Scots as perfect and without stain, while her victorious rival Elizabeth was painted in infernal black.
This subject naturally gave the proselyte occasion to display his burning zeal for Rome; and upon the publication of the play a great outcry was raised against both drama and author. Some of Vondel's enemies, indeed, were so incensed, and raised such a commotion, that the poet was brought before the city tribunal, and fined one hundred and eighty guldens; "which," says Brandt, Vondel's biographer, "seemed indeed strange to many, seeing what freedom in writing was allowed at this time, and because, also, even to the poets of antiquity more was permitted than to most others." Abraham de Wees, Vondel's publisher, however, paid the fine, being unwilling that the poet should suffer by that which brought him profit.
Hugo Grotius was now dead, but shortly before his decease he had written several pamphlets whose object it was to effect some reconciliation between Catholic and Protestant. Vondel now translated those portions of these favorable to the papacy, combining them in a polemic called "Grotius' Testament." Whereupon many said that he had now gone too far in his zeal for his adopted church; for it was claimed that upon the statements of Grotius he often put a construction not favored by the context. It was even insinuated by some that he had not acted in good faith.
Brandt himself made this intimation in a preface written by him to an edition of Vondel's collected works which was published in the year 1647. Brandt was then yet a mere youth, and was rankling with the memory of a severe and unjust reprimand that the older poet some time before had given him. He therefore acknowledges in his naïve biography that he eagerly welcomed this opportunity to be revenged upon the distinguished offender, and accordingly made this dose of his gall as bitter as possible. The poet felt the insinuation keenly, and for a long time suspected Peter de Groot, the son of the great lawyer, as the perpetrator of the offending paragraph. Many years afterwards, however, the smart of the wound having departed, the real culprit confessed his sin to the then aged poet, and obtained the asked for absolution.